


you live like this?

by Anonymous



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-11
Updated: 2016-10-11
Packaged: 2018-08-21 20:31:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8259662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Adam, a poor graduate student with very few possession to his name, is woken up in the middle of night by a strange man in his apartment. The intruder takes in the pitiful state of his apartment and asks, "You live like this?" It's the start of a beautiful relationship.[ based on a classic tumblr/tweet post linked in notes ]





	

    Adam’s apartment wasn’t much, but it was his. He was pretty sure the old woman renting it to him had knocked off a hundred dollars from her asking price after seeing how threadbare all of his clothes were, although she swore it was because she had refinanced her old mortgage and didn’t need the rent as much. He hadn’t argued the point, although there was a time when he might have. He was learning to accept the smaller acts of generosity that people heaped on him as kindness instead of pity.

    That was why, when he was awakened by his front door swinging creakily open late one night, he didn’t immediately assume the worst. There was a time when he would have bolted out of bed in anticipation of his father’s blows, but it had been years since that was a reality and Adam, a year into graduate school and six years into living on his own, had learned to not be so afraid in the meantime. Still, when he made out the shadowy figure of a stranger in the shadows of his apartment, he startled awake, reaching for a baseball bat that was no longer there because he had loaned it to a friend for a recreation league.

    “Agnes?” he asked warily, although reasonably the shadowy figure was much too large to be his frail landlady,

    The figure laughed sharply and Adam used the moment to flick on the lamp that sat on the floor next to him. The figure swam into sharp focus as light filled the small space and the intruder squinted at the lamp as if it had offended him, but then giving Adam a once over, went back to looking around the bare walls and empty floors of the small studio in apparent awe. He was tall, at least a few inches taller than Adam, and he was stooped slightly so he wouldn’t hit his head on the low ceiling. Dressed in all black, his head was shaved, but the shadow of dark hair was visible on his scalp. He couldn’t be any older than Adam was, maybe even a year or two younger.

   Adam felt a knife jab of attraction to the stranger before he remembered that he was an intruder and not some guy out on the street. He was just opening his mouth to say something when the stranger interrupted him in a raspy, low voice.

   “Shit, man,” the guy said. “You live like this?”

    Adam stared at him. His head was still foggy with exhaustion and he suddenly couldn’t decide if this was a particularly vivid dream or reality. He has read once that everyone you meet in dreams was someone you had met in real life and your subconscious just recreated them, but he was fairly certain he’d never seen this tall, imposing stranger before.

    “Do I know you?” he asked, voice scratchy. “How did you get in?”

    The intruder ignored his question. He was standing, hands on hips, and looking around the empty room with a frown, obviously disappointed by the total lack of possessions. Adam wasn’t sure if he needed to be embarrassed or angry at the intrusion. He was leaning towards angry with every second that the stranger ignored him but without his baseball bat, he was powerless to do much. In the soft light of the lamp, Adam could tell the stranger not only had a few inches on him, but also considerably more mass. Adam was no brawler. He pulled himself up from his makeshift pallette on the floor and stood. This seemed to break the stranger’s concentration and he frowned at Adam.

    “Hey, who are you?” he asked again. “What do you want?”

    The stranger huffed at him and then shrugged, spreading his arms wide.

    “This is a case of mistaken robbery, man,” he said. He reached up to rub the back of his neck and turned, allowing Adam a glimpse of a tattoo peeking out from the top of his shirt and curling onto his neck. Adam refused to find it attractive.

    “I don’t think that’s actually a thing,” Adam pointed out, crossing his arms. His eyes had made it up and down the stranger three times by now and he was fairly certain he didn’t have a gun on him, but that didn’t rule out knives.

    “Shit,” the stranger said, seeming to agree with him. “Do you really not have anything or are you just waiting for it to show up or something?”

    Adam looked around at the small apartment, seeing it through a stranger’s eyes and flushing with embarrassment all over again. His sleeping pallette was more a nest of blankets than bed and the small lamp he’d turned on was sitting naked on the floor. A single, worn beanbag sat next to an upturned crate that served as Adam’s desk most days. It was more than nothing, but not much more.

    The stranger was backing himself out of the apartment.

    “You going to be here tomorrow?” he asked.

    Adam felt as though he had been struck dumb.

    “What?”

    “Tomorrow,” the strange said, sounding out each syllable as though Adam didn’t understand the word.

    “What?” Adam asked again. The stranger sighed as though Adam were testing his patience.

    “I’ll be back around 10,” he said. “Maybe 11. Make sure you’re here.”

Then he was gone and Adam was left standing alone in his suddenly empty apartment.    

–

    There was a sharp knock on the door at exactly 10:03 AM the next morning. Adam had never gone back to bed the night before, or at least not fully anyways, and had to count to three before wrenching the door open to see last night’s intruder on the other side of it. He was as tall as Adam remembered him to be, although his hands were shoved in his pockets now, making his shoulders hunch forward a bit. He looked irritated and cold in the bright morning sunshine, but just as unfairly attractive as Adam remembered him to be. Adam frowned at the thought.

    “So you do know how to knock,” Adam said. The stranger squinted at him and then scowled.

    “I brought stuff,” he said and then stepping aside, he gestured down the stairs to where a bright orange Camaro sat in the driveway. A large piece of furniture was strapped into the gaping trunk and a few boxes were visible beside it.

    “Stuff,” Adam repeated incredulously.

    “For your place,” the stranger said, as though Adam were particularly slow. Adam gave him a long look and the man lifted a single shoulder in response and then bounded down the stairs again without waiting for a response. He tapped on the window of the Camaro and another man hopped out and waved up at Adam. He was considerably better groomed than Adam’s intruder, wearing a sweatervest and pressed khakis and looking like he was about to go teach at a Latin grammar school directly after he helped bring boxes up to Adam’s apartment.

    The sweatervest man brought up a box and grinned hugely at Adam, as if it were a totally normal day and he helped his friend with this sort of thing all the time. Once he had set the box down on the floor inside, he spun around and held out a hand to Adam.

    “I’m Gansey,” he said and when Adam took his hand, he pumped it enthusiastically. “What a cozy place you have here! Do most of the houses in this neighborhood have apartments above the garages like this? What an efficient use of the space. Absolutely ingenious.”

    “Adam,” he said and Gansey nodded, absorbing his name and then moving on immediately.

    Adam knew he was gaping, but he felt as though he should be looking for a hidden camera. He could barely manage an “Uh” before Gansey had gone on to admiring the way the windows let in so much natural light. When Adam’s intruder made it up the stairs again, lugging the huge piece of furniture from the trunk that turned out to be a dresser, Gansey snapped his fingers and turned back to Adam.

    “You know, Ronan didn’t mention if you went to university or not, but I swear that’s where I recognize you from. Are you a one of Greenmantle’s?” Gansey asked.

    Ronan, Adam thought, and his eyes flicked over to his intruder who was currently scowling at Gansey while pushing the dresser into a corner of the apartment.

   “Dick,” Ronan said with exaggerated diction and Gansey shot him an annoyed look.

   “Alright, alright, point well taken,” he said and followed Ronan out the door, casting words over his shoulder at Adam. “Boxes first, questions later!”

   Ronan and Gansey made two more trips each, both unperturbed by Adam’s unhelpful stares as he watched them bring several boxes and smaller pieces of furniture into his apartment. A bedside table had appeared and Ronan had carefully set his lamp atop it. A box full of various kitchen utensils and microwave was next and then a fold-out table and two chairs that Gansey leaned against the wall.

   Finally, when it seemed like they were done bringing stuff up, Ronan stood with his hands on his hips in the middle of Adam’s apartment in an eerie echo of how he had been the night before when Adam had first seen him. Adam was about to say so, when Ronan turned back to him frowning,

   “I think I can get a bed for you too, but it might be a couple days.” It was the first thing he’d said directly to Adam since their brief conversations when he’d first arrived that morning. Adam frowned.

   “I didn’t ask for any of this,” he said. “I don’t have any way to pay you back.”

   Ronan smiled, but it was a sharp, unkind smile, leached of humor.

   “I didn’t pay for any of it anyways.”

–

    When Ronan banged on his door three days later, Adam wasn’t surprised to see him. He was, however, taken aback to see a battered pick-up truck with a mattress in its bed in the shaded driveway outside.

   “Are you trying to get me arrested?” he groaned.

    Ronan pushed past him into the small apartment, rolling his eyes, He was wearing a black t-shirt that someone had hacked the sleeves off of so that it hung so loosely around his torso that Adam could clearly see his toned stomach. It made Adam’s mouth go dry.

   He remembered Gansey’s offhand comment from a few days earlier as he and Ronan climbed into that Camaro to leave: _Ronan, next time you want to flirt, can you think of a way to do it that doesn’t involve physical labor on my part?_ and how Ronan had laughed, in the same humorless way that he had smiled at Adam a few minutes before.

   What did that mean exactly? _Was_ he flirting? If so, it was an exceedingly strange way to do it, although Adam was beginning to suspect that there was something exceedingly strange about Ronan himself. After Ronan and his friend had left that day, Adam had inspected each new piece of furniture and kitchenware for signs of previous ownership and not a single piece had a scratch on it or a manufacturer’s label, even the microwave which Adam had discovered also did not plug into the wall although it was fully operational. Adam wasn’t sure what to make of it.

    “Don’t worry so much,” Ronan said after he had pushed his way into Adam’s apartment. He was studying Adam’s pallet of blankets shrewdly and then, seeming to make a decision, he swept them up into his arms and dumped them in the far corner next to the dresser.

    “Hey!” Adam cried, stepping forward.

    “Where else are we gonna put your bed, dumbass?” Ronan griped and turned to head back outside, letting the door bang shut behind him. Adam stood in his wake for a moment before shaking himself and following. He stopped to jam the door open with a shoe.

    Ten minutes later, they were both covered in sweat, but Adam’s apartment had acquired a new twin bed and a wire frame. Ronan was drinking the lukewarm tap water from the tap in a plastic cup with no ice since Adam didn’t have any. Adam looked around at his apartment and felt trepidation in the pit of his stomach. He sat down on the edge of the bed they had just assembled and ran a hand through his already mussed hair. He didn’t miss the way Ronan’s eyes tracked the movement.

    “So, what do I do when the cops show up?” he asked, half-jokingly.

    “They won’t,” Ronan said and Adam felt a cool draft of annoyance with other man.

    “How do you know that? This stuff is all stolen, isn’t it? Doesn’t it make sense that they come looking for it eventually?” Adam pressed.

    “Man, you’re asking the wrong questions,” Ronan snapped and then his face shut down immediately into an indifferent blankness. Adam tilted his head in sudden attention, but Ronan did not continue. The air was tense between them until Adam ventured to speak again.

    “What are the right questions?”

    Ronan didn’t answer. Adam noticed that he was gripping the plastic cup so tightly that his knuckles were white and the cup was bending under the strain. He let the question settle between them for a long time and thought about the microwave that he had inspected for a plug and then a battery pack and then out desperation, a solar panel and how he had come up empty.

    “Would the right question be along the lines of ‘Gee, Ronan, I noticed that none of the shit you brought to my apartment has any markings or labels on it or obvious sources of power. How is that that happens?” Adam asked.

    He knew he had hit upon a nerve because Ronan sank onto the edge of the bed next to him and put the cup down on the floor next to his feet. His hands clasped together tightly as though he were praying, but then he released them just as quickly, flexing his fingers so hard it looked painful to Adam.

    “Knew you couldn’t go to that fancy school for nothing,” Ronan said.

    Adam watched him carefully, but didn’t say anything. Ronan didn’t seem particularly inclined to say anything either and a silence fell between them that was neither comfortable nor uncomfortable, but somewhere in between. Adam watched him out of the corner of his eye and found that Ronan was watching him as well.

    “You don’t have to tell me today so long as you promise the cops aren’t going to come knocking on my door to look for that microwave,” Adam said, conceding defeat at least for the day.

    Ronan seemed to consider this,

    “I didn’t steal any of this,” he said with a small, dismissive wave at the room. “At least not in the way you’re thinking. It’s just…copied.”

    “Copied?” Adam couldn’t help himself from asking.

“I can’t really explain,” he said.

    “Today or ever?” Adam asked.

    Ronan looked at him appraisingly for a long time and then frowned, kicking his legs back and falling back against the wall. After a long time, he said quietly, “Today.”

    Adam leaned back next to him and let their arms press together on the small bed, his legs swinging off the long edge. Ronan did not pull away and Adam thought, not for the first time that day, that if this was how Ronan flirted, he was truly terrible at it.

    “So, why steal things at all?” Adam asked after a long time of just silence between them.

    Ronan was suddenly cagey. He sat up and ran a hand over the top of his head before casting a look back to Adam. Adam sat up on his elbows but didn’t get up any further. Ronan leaned forward on his knees and didn’t look at Adam when he spoke next.

   “It’s more like borrowing,” he said finally, then hesitated. “I bring the stuff back later.”

    “And somewhere in the meantime you make perfect copies of the stuff by some magical, alchemical process?” Adam asked.

   Ronan ignored the bite of sarcasm in Adam’s voice    and smiled, his blue eyes sharp and clear.

   “Yeah, something like that.”

   “Sounds like the perfect crime.”

    “Never been caught,” he said.

    “I caught you,” Adam pointed out.

    Ronan snorted derisively. Adam supposed he had a point. It was a little too late to report Ronan’s break-in anyways - seeing as how Adam’s apartment was conspicuously well-furnished all of a sudden. He was nervous enough as it was that his old landlady would come by and see the sudden remarkable improvement in living conditions and decide she really did need that extra hundred on the rent after all.

    Ronan fell back next to Adam and looked over at him. Adam moved a little closer into his space, brushing up against his side experimentally. Ronan stared back at him, his face giving away nothing.

    “Why did you do all of this for me?” Adam asked. “We don’t even know each other.”

    Ronan frowned and broke their gaze to look up at the ceiling, but then his eyes flicked back over to Adam.

    “I don’t know,” he confessed. “I’ve never done it before. I just felt like it, I guess.”

    “‘Cause you felt sorry for me,” Adam said with a small sigh. He sat up from the bed and swung himself up to standing. Ronan followed him into the small kitchenette.

    “That wasn’t it,” he said, his voice low and more serious than Adam had heard it be before. “It was…fuck, I don’t know. I just felt like I knew you or something.”

    Adam didn’t know what to say to that, so it hung in the air between them until Ronan scrubbed at his face and sighed.

    “I should go,” he said and Adam felt a surge of disappointment. Ronan took his silence as agreement and opened the door of the apartment, pausing in the doorway to look back at Adam. “I, uh - sorry, for breaking in.”

    The apology was halting, but sincere. Adam suspected it was the first that Ronan had apologized for anything in a long time and he hid a small smile in his shoulder, pretending he had an itch. Ronan turned to leave and Adam followed him out onto the small landing.

    “Hey, Ronan?” Adam asked, grabbing the other man by the arm to stop him. Ronan allowed it, pausing and looking back to Adam. Adam licked his lips in preparation to say something further, but when Ronan’s eyes noticeably dropped to catch the movement, Adam’s thoughts derailed. His mind replayed Gansey’s comment about flirting again, unbidden and thought maybe.

   Adam looked up to find Ronan looking back at him in a way that tipped the scale a little closer to probably. Adam took a step closer to close the distance between them, giving Ronan time to back away or leave, but Ronan did not react, keeping perfectly still. Adam moved slowly, letting his fingers trace up Ronan’s arm, lightly outlining the curve of his biceps, until he curled his hand around the nape of Ronan’s neck. Ronan’s eyes were dark and focused entirely on Adam’s mouth and when Adam licked his lips again, Ronan’s throat bobbed visibly. Adam inched a little closer and then finally, he slowly reached up and pulled Ronan’s face down to his own to kiss him. Ronan’s mouth was softer than Adam had imagined it to be, his lips pliant and giving as Adam pressed his own against them. Ronan grabbed a fistful of Adam’s shirt and pulled him closer, his rough handling at direct odds with the soft kiss, but Adam didn’t mind. He felt a little dizzy when they finally pulled apart, both breathing heavily.

    It took Adam a minute to gather his thoughts again.

    “I was just gonna say,” Adam said. “Don’t bring me any more stuff.”

    “Okay,” Ronan agreed. His face was suddenly shuttered and he stepped quickly away from Adam, releasing his fistful of his shirt. Adam tightened his grip on Ronan’s arm as he realized his mistake, not letting him get too far away.

    “Shit. I mean,” he said, taking a deep breath to start over. “You don’t have to bring me stuff to come around is all. I’d like if you just came, you know, because.”

    “Because,” Ronan repeated. A beat later, his face cracked a rare smile, more of a smirk really. Much better than the humorless smile from a few days before. Adam felt his own lips curling upwards in reply.

    “Just because,” Adam agreed and pulled him into another kiss.  


  



End file.
